37,000 medicos in India suffer from mental issues and the burden only keeps increasing. Our Director, Dr. Edmond Fernandes had pointed this out through his work published in the EPW titled “ Wounded Healers” which the government could have used to avert this crisis long back.
Taking cognisance of this, the apex medical education authority has prescribed several measures including regulating the duty hours of the students and initiating a suicide watch. These recommendations by the National Medical Commission (NMC) will be submitted before the Union Health Ministry for further implementation across the medical colleges in the country.
According to NMC data, 153 MBBS and 1120 doctors pursuing PG medical courses dropped out of their institutes in the last five years. Apart from the dropouts, at least 122 medical students, 64 in MBBS and 58 in post-graduate courses died by suicide between 2018 – 2023.
The rate of doctor suicide, unregulated work hours builds a crisis like never before.
